


Moments Of Respite

by tielan



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Post-Season/Series 01, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1916973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little moments between friends and team-mates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments Of Respite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [distractionpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/gifts).



Phil’s second waking from the dead is rather more comfortable than his first.

“Hello!” The voice is bright with bedside manner, young, and familiar. “You’re back! Do you know who you are?”

“Phil Coulson,” he manages a smile, because he knows what the next question is. “And you’re Jemma Simmons.” He looks around them, frowning a little. “I don’t know where I am though.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t have seen it before. Commander—That is, Ms. Hill, arranged for you to be brought here for the,” Jemma pauses, “treatment.”

His brain is swimming, the near-constant headache he’s been fighting fighting fighting for the last four months fading to leave a clarity that’s almost like pain.

The realisation knifes through him like Loki’s staff: Two people descending into madness, only one cure.

“Skye?” He’s sitting, standing, out of bed before he thinks about it. Jemma jerks back, startled, but isn’t fast enough to get out of reach. “What about Skye?”

“She’s—she’s alive. She’s fine, in fact, she’s better than fine. And you—” In spite of the hands that drop from her shoulders, the large dark eyes are lit with a delight that borders on gleeful. “So are you!”

Phil realises he’s standing. No dizziness from getting up so fast, No nausea from the treatment. Even the headache is a fading twinge in his head. And he feels…good. Much better than the painful, fragmented memories of those last days. Although a little cold.

“Um, sir?” Jemma coughs, her cheeks flaming pink. “You might want to fix your hospital gown a little.”

 

Seventy years of trying to make a super-soldier, and all they needed was to dial it down.

“At least by half,” says Triplett, undaunted by the sight of Phil pressing half again his usual weights.

“Probably more,” Jemma says from the side, monitoring Phil’s vitals, “given the state you and Skye were in when we injected you. Enough to put you back on your feet – or, at least, to make your body capable of enduring what the T.A.H.I.T.I serum is putting you through. Are you feeling any fatigue?”

“No,” Phil says, and glanced over Trip, spotting him. “Try another.”

Trip loads another weight onto each end of the barbell, arching a brow when Phil humphs and adjusts his grip. “Too much?”

“No.” He does a handful of reps. “But I think I’m starting to feel it a little.”

Triplett snorts and shakes his head, just grinning. Jemma looks up from her tablet. “You can stop if it hurts, you know.”

“I know,” he says. “But I feel my muscles are being used now.”

 

The worst part of realising what  S.H.I.E.L.D did to him the first time was the guilt.

Why him? Why should he have survived when others didn’t?

The second time they bring him back – this time from Death’s doorstep rather than from the far side of Death's gates – the guilt isn’t any easier.

Certainly not when Fitz pauses to rest his hands on the desk and take a breath. As the outcomes of decompression sickness go, it could have been far, far worse. Fitz is alive with all his mental faculties intact. That he walks with a limp and occasionally has to pause for breath might take him out of the field if he were on anyone else's team.

“Sorry, sir.” The smile is faint and a little pained. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“Never apologise. You’re as young as you are,” Phil says, pushing the guilt away. “Tell me about the chamber.”

“I’m not entirely sure I can,” Fitz admits. “It’s brilliant – if we can get Howard Stark’s notes on the design – I know that Dr. Erskine had a lot of input and tinkered with things, but I’m pretty sure that Jemma could replicate his work—” He pauses, lifting his gaze to Phil, as though divining Phil’s thoughts. The young man who limped back onto the Bus isn’t the same one who came on when Phil first assembled his team. “We don’t want to replicate it, do we?”

“Do _you_ want to replicate it?”

“It would be nice to walk again,” Fitz says, thoughtfully. “Properly, I mean, not limping everywhere. I’m slowing the team down. On the other hand, if we do it for one person, there’s nothing to stop others for doing it for everyone.”

“Simmons would.”

“Yes. That’s why she’s Simmons.” The love in Fitz’s voice burns with the intensity of a nova star. “But the truth is, I’d rather limp for the rest of my life than see this fall into the wrong hands.”

 

Melinda's in the middle of her warm-up forms when Phil arrives.

Against the rising sun, her figure glows, the solid black of her outline ringed in fiery gold. For a moment, Phil isn’t sure if he’s seeing what the world is at this moment, or what Melinda has always been – solid assurance wreathed in dangerous fire.

He stands at the door, wondering if he should intrude.

“Skye’s sleeping in,” Melinda says after a moment. She gives him a frowning look when he comes further into the room and lets the door close behind him. She doesn’t say that he’s welcome to stay. Phil doesn’t need her to.

“Mind if I join you?”

Melinda doesn’t demur, and he toes off his shoes and jersey. The rug is soft under his feet, and he mimics her stance and follows her movements, his body making none of the protests it once did. If the serum hasn’t turned him into Steve Rogers, it’s done wonders for his general health.

But if Phil feels like he’s twenty-five again,  S.H.I.E.L.D still needs an old head at the helm, not a young immortal.

Which is why he’s here: discipline, control, and Melinda there as comfort and reminder – the benefit and the cost of what they do.

That, and he likes the way the morning light warms them, bathing Melinda and himself in a golden glow – the peace and silence of a new day, with no mistakes in it – yet.

 

“I think we need a new name for  S.H.I.E.L.D,” Skye says in the galley one night while chowing down on a sandwich around which she can barely fit her hands. “And ‘Monsters Inc.’ would totally work.”

Phil looks up from his own sandwich, only a little smaller. “We’d have to pay royalties to Disney. And we’re not monsters.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I couldn't make this longer! I think this might be the first time I've written Agents of SHIELD...


End file.
